In generative corruption, however, which is moderate and occurs while preserving the specific form potentially inherent in the seed or matter, that sublime inborn spirit does not withdraw. Though weak and as yet powerless, it is awakened by external heat and begins to move and at the same time to move the matter, until at last it exercises its powers more strongly and perfectly informs the mixed body.

Nature’s elements, and likewise food, begin generation and nourishment—which follow almost the same pattern—with putrefaction. Both must putrefy and through putrefaction be resolved into moist matter, as though into first matter. There then arises a chaos containing everything necessary for generation or nourishment. Thus the generation and restoration of every Microcosm correspond by analogy to the creation and preservation of the Macrocosm.

THE SEEDS OF THINGS.

The perceptible seeds of things, and the mixed bodies born from them, consist of a threefold nature: heavenly, elemental, and [an intermediary]. From Heaven they have within them a ray of sunlight clothed in every ethereal power: the principle of action, movement, generation and life, and form in potentiality. Through its benefit seeds imitate the constancy of the stars by their reviving power. Like immortal shoots of heavenly plants grafted upon corruptible nature as upon a foreign stock, they rescue it from death through a kind of everlasting succession. The elemental portion, bodily and perceptible, which in animals is called sperm, is the seed’s guardian and capsule. This portion putrefies and decays, while the invisible seed generates. Radical moisture, or Nature’s ferment, to which the spirit adheres, is an intermediate substance joining the heavenly and elemental natures. On its material side it corresponds to the elements, and on its spiritual side to form. It resembles dawn, which, suffused with dusky light, joins the extremes of light and shadow and, being neither, displays a mixture of both.

LIFE AND DEATH.

Life is a harmonious actuality proceeding from the union of matter and form and constituting the perfected being of an individual. Death is the limit or end of that actuality, the separation of matter and form and the dissolution of the mixed body.

SPIRITUAL NATURES.

Mixed bodies have the roots of their generation and life in Heaven, from which their causes and principles flowed. From there too, like inverted trees, they draw sap and nourishment. The intellect does not deserve to be enslaved to the authority of the senses, which judge only perceptible things. The mind reaches far beyond the boundaries of the senses and searches more deeply into Nature’s territories. Bodies are like rinds: the coarser parts of the elements and the accidents of things. Beneath them lie hidden pure and effective essences that do not acknowledge the senses as their judge. These essences had to be clothed in a kind of dense cloud to migrate from the heavenly realm into this earthly province of bodily things. The supreme Creator of Nature ordained this marriage of spiritual and bodily things, so that his uncreated Spirit, first communicating itself to spiritual and simpler natures, might descend through them as intermediaries into bodily natures. Thus, pouring itself out by degrees and in order through every region of the World, through all things together and each individually, it might sustain the whole work by the presence of divinity. It was also so that the imperceptible Creator might be apprehended by the perceptible creature through bodily and perceptible images.

All living things, whether plants or animals, need their own food, so that the natural spirits continually flowing out through their pores may be restored and Nature’s expenditure made good. From the more succulent substance of food comes the nourishing juice by which the parts and humours of the whole body are replenished. From the purer portion of the humours, especially the blood, radical moisture is renewed and restored as an ethereal influx mingles with it through respiration.

TWOFOLD NOURISHMENT, BODILY AND SPIRITUAL.

* Deuteronomy, chapter 33.

Living things are sustained by twofold nourishment, bodily and spiritual. Without the latter, the former contributes little to life. Plants plainly owe the benefit of their growth and nourishment no less to air and Heaven than to earth. Indeed, unless earth herself drank ethereal milk, her breasts would wither. The sacred initiate into Nature’s secrets expressed this sufficiently when blessing Joseph:* “May his land receive the blessing of the Lord: from the fruits of heaven, from the dew and the deep lying beneath; from the fruits brought forth by the Sun and Moon; from the summit of the ancient mountains; from the fruits of the everlasting hills”, and so forth. In this mystical language the Prophet promises earth’s fertility from the influence of the Sun and Moon and the abundant influx of heavenly things.